


Down All Through the Days

by Keysmasher



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Basically post-S3 AU where Dean doesn't come back, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Non-violent JSYK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 15:34:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keysmasher/pseuds/Keysmasher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Winchester works in the Stanford library. Kevin comes in every Monday.</p><p>Based on "Up All Night" by cordelia_gray. Essentially a rewrite through Sam's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down All Through the Days

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Up All Night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013631) by [cordelia_gray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordelia_gray/pseuds/cordelia_gray). 



Mondays were the best.

Sam got to go to work. He got to be normal. He got to distract himself from the loss of Dean.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. This isn't angst.

This is romance.  
***  
Sam first notices him when he's giving a tour of the library. He'd hoped, he'd prayed, and the university had taken pity on him. They'd given him credit for the courses he hadn't completed; he'd had As and Bs in all of them, the only grades left to be put in were the finals, and they waived those because of 'the trauma'.

(That's how everyone referred to it back then. 'The trauma.' As if he couldn't handle the word 'fire'.)

With those courses added to his academic record, he'd been granted his bachelor's. He'd majored in religious studies, double-minored in math and education, and concentrated in pre-law; he'd found it easiest to tell Dean he'd majored in pre-law because he'd get a ration of shit if Dean found out his real courses of study.

(Now he'd trade anything for Dean to mock him again, but nothing was interested in dealing. Not after what he'd done in that terrible year trying to save Dean and failing, failing the way he always did.)

With those degrees, he'd applied for a position at the Stanford library; maybe being a lawyer was out of the question now (of course it was, he'd never pass a background check to be a prosecutor and juries would distrust his scarred face and limp if he tried to be a public defendant, and he'd never had any interest in civil suits), but he had some idea of maybe someday going to grad school and getting a teaching license. He could get an undergrad teaching license for high school, of course, but he'd much rather teach college.

(All that was assuming he'd want to leave the library one day, but so far, he hadn't gathered up enough motivation to move on with his life.)

So he worked at the library, in special collections. Between digitizing manuscripts and translating old books (his coworkers were surprised to find he didn't even need a dictionary for some of them; he'd grown up learning Latin and Greek and Spanish, of course he could translate Plato, though cuneiform was a special challenge helped along by University of Toronto's digitized texts), he kept himself busy, busy enough he didn't have time to actively mourn Dean so much as he filled time so wouldn't have to. He gave tours, helped with homework, did whatever the job entailed. He hunted on weekends, if there was something close by, but some days he couldn't bring himself to get out of bed unless his job required it.

One day, five years after Dean had been (eviscerated, killed, dragged to Hell where he's burning and screaming and being tortured, damn it Sam _stop thinking_ ), he gave a tour during orientation. He was rattling off the facts - here's the carrels, here's the revolving section with different displays through the year, here's a good place to study, always use gloves when touching _these_ and ask for help with _these_ but it's okay to go through _these_ without any special considerations - when he raised his hand to ask a question.

"Mr. Winchester," he said, "er, Sam, I mean, are these catalogued online? Or are they still on cards?"

Sam had to smile. "They're online," he said. "We're actually in the middle of a massive digitizing project. Translation and scanning. But yes, they're online - one of the possible search functions is 'special collections', which I forgot to tell y'all. They're indexed by author, title, subject, date range - usually centuries, though some are under both century and time period, like 'Italian Renaissance'. And if you can't find anything, I'm here pretty much all day every day except Sunday."

It broke labor laws, but nobody really gave a shit. Sam was basically his own boss at this point and it kept his mind off Dean.

"I heard it was haunted," one of the girls said, eyes wide.

Sam forced a laugh and a smile. "Of course it's not," he said. Truth was, it had been until he torched the damn medal that was to blame. It had been in storage since its last display in 1987, so nobody missed it.

After that, he noticed the kid more often. He was the only one to take Sam up on his suggestion of studying in Special Collections, though he seemed to spend more time looking than studying.

Sam wasn't a vain guy, but the way the kid looked at him made him curious, so one day, he stopped by the table. "Hey."

"Oh, um, hey." The kid bit his lip. He had dark circles under his eyes and he was paler than he usually was, like he wasn't sleeping.

Sam decided the only way to sate his curiosity would be to come right out and ask. "So, you're here pretty often. What's your name?"

"K-Kevin Tran," he stuttered out.

Sam nodded. "Good to meet you, Kevin Tran," he said with a brief smile. "You need help, let me know. I'm pretty good with more than just libraries."

It wasn't until a blush spread over Kevin's cheeks that Sam realized how that could be taken, and he hurriedly said, "Schoolwork! Schoolwork. Sorry. Didn't mean it like that."

"What did you major in?" Kevin asked.

 _None of your beeswax,_ Dean's voice sneered in his mind.

He ignored it. "Majored in religious studies, minored in math and education, concentrated in pre-law. You're pre-law too, I'm guessing, by the books you've got in front of you."

"Um, yeah." He blinked up at Sam.

"Anyway. I'll let you get back to studying." He nodded at the book and left, right leg dragging a little behind him, left over from when he'd physically tried to get between the hellhounds and Dean. He'd failed to keep them away.

He'd stop by occasionally. Kevin came in every Monday at 1:05 and left at 1:50. "Break from one to two?" Sam asked one day when Kevin put his books down on what had unofficially become his table.

"Uh, yeah," Kevin said. "When's your break?"

Sam smiled. "I pretty much set my own. What professors do you have?"

"Kelly, Thornton, Wilder, and Ogive."

"That's a pre-law, a math, a psych, and a history, right?" Sam asked, knowing the answer. He'd had all four of them. "Kelly's a stickler, but if you need time to sleep - which, no offense, you look like you do - he's pretty good with extensions."

"I'll keep it in mind," Kevin promised.

The next week, Kevin came in with a question about standard deviations, and Sam walked him through a problem before getting back to work.

Every time they talked after that, Kevin seemed to get more curious. He never got to the point of tapping Sam's cheek and saying, "What's that scar from?" - it had been a banshee - but he tried to ask about Sam's family. 

Oh, he knew the rumors. He knew them all. He didn't care, and he didn't feel like explaining himself, so instead, Sam asked about Kevin's family, and Kevin told him about his mother.

In November the first year he'd been employed, Sam had found the stairway to the roof and deactivated the alarm. The next day he'd brought a blanket in with him and lay back, watching the stars and drinking beer, remembering doing the same thing with Dean for most of his childhood. Unlike most of the other memories he had, it didn't make him sad. It just made it feel like maybe Dean wasn't quite so far away. Still, the first few years, he'd look over at the edge and wonder if maybe Hell with Dean would be better than Earth without him.

He spent a lot of time up there every November, remembering all the deaths that had happened that month. 

The Friday before Thanksgiving, Kevin came in despite it technically being break and made a beeline for the carrel. Sam left him alone - kid had books with him, he was probably studying - for almost an hour. When he _did_ finally go over, it was to find him asleep, face stuck to an open page. He went back to the employee break room, nabbed a bottle of water, and came back out to wake him up. He'd slept in the library often enough as an undergrad to know how uncomfortable it was.

"You okay?" Sam asked when Kevin was sitting up and drinking. He leaned against the desk - today was a cane day, there was rain coming and everything was swelling, no matter what the Weather Channel said he knew there was a storm on its way - and his leg wouldn't support his weight for long.

"Yeah," Kevin said, but he looked exhausted and stressed.

Sam frowned. "You going home this week?" he asked.

Kevin shook his head. "My mom's in Singapore. She'll be home sometime in the next year."

Sam remembered shitty motel rooms and shittier times with his dad, and did something he questioned the wisdom of even as he did it. "Here," he said, scribbling his cell number on a corner of an already-graded test. "Call me if you need to."

He refused to admit to himself it was anything other than protective instinct kicking in. He'd spent his entire life trying to help people, and Kevin was no different.

Finals week he didn't see Kevin at all, which meant they didn't talk before winter break. He hoped he found someplace to crash and something to eat, remembering that had been the hardest part of the year, undergrad breaks with nowhere to live. He'd spent the summer after his freshman year in a homeless shelter, and gone back there for breaks, though he _had_ rented an apartment with Jess after sophomore year.

Winter break was annoying. He spent most of it either in the library or drunk out of his mind, trying desperately to forget the times Dean had done his best to make the holidays less shitty for him. Bobby called on Christmas day, and they made awkward small talk for a bit, but Dean was there, a ghost between them. They talked about hunting, a safe enough topic; Sam was almost retired now, with his leg all munged up and useless.

It was a full moon that night, and Sam went to the library roof to watch the stars.

January ninth was the first Monday of spring semester, and Sam was less than surprised to find Kevin in the library again. "Have a good break?" he asked.

Kevin smiled. "Yeah. My mom came back from Singapore. How was yours?"

"It was okay," Sam said diplomatically. "What classes are you taking this semester?"

Sam wasn't a social animal by any stretch of the imagination. He went to bars, he hustled, he talked with other people in the library - but that was to make money, to make his life easier, to keep the faculty from thinking him a freak like the students did. Kevin was the first person he'd actually _wanted_ to talk to in a very, very long time.

So maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise when he went to take care of business one afternoon after work, computer open to some porn site he'd forget the name of by tomorrow morning, and suddenly his mind was filled with Kevin's smile and lips and hair.

He shut down the computer and put himself away, heart pounding, libido unsated, because while he could stare at porn all he liked, fantasizing about a student was _not okay._ If he stayed in the apartment that's all he'd think about, so he threw on jeans and a shirt.

Friday was an appropriate night to go to the bar. He'd play some pool, make some money, pick up someone for a one-night stand, and go back home. Kevin would be forgotten.

Except he was only halfway through his first beer when he saw Kevin, disheveled, laughing too loud, stumbling a little too much. He saw the way some of the other patrons were looking at him speculatively, and the protective instinct - and, okay, the _possessive_ instinct - rose up again.

He put down his beer and walked over, grabbing Kevin's elbow when he started to tip too much. Kevin looked up at him, confused, and then very obviously relaxed against him.

He managed to get Kevin back to campus and into his dorm without running into the campus police - he had to get Kevin's ID and room key from his wallet, but that was okay, this was okay, it wasn't like he was prying, he just needed to know where Kevin lived so he could get him home safe - and poured him into bed on his side, wrestling his shoes off his feet. Kevin tried to kiss him, once, and he gently pushed his head back down onto the pillow before he could be tempted to give in. He put Kevin's wallet and keys on the desk and left, wondering if Kevin would remember anything and hoping not. Things were complicated enough already; if tonight had made anything clear, it was that Kevin was interested in him.

He was too young, too innocent, for Sam's life. After Ruby had promised they could get Dean back, and Sam had killed her with her own knife for lying, he'd sworn to never get involved with anyone. It was too dangerous, for them and for him.

Kevin was a college student, totally untouched by the supernatural, so he couldn't be dangerous to Sam - but Sam could definitely be dangerous to him. He needed to keep his distance.

Later that day, Kevin came by. "Sam?" he said tentatively. "I just - uh, I'm sorry, I feel like shit about last night, and uh-"

"Last night?" Sam asked carefully.

"Yeah. You know, you found me in the bar, and, uh, I woke up in my bed, so I guess you had something to do with that?"

Sam relaxed. Kevin obviously didn't remember the almost-kiss. "It's okay."

"I'm just really sorry about-"

"It's fine," Sam interrupted. "You're not the first drunk person I've done that for." He'd done it for his father, his brother, most of his friends at one point or another.

Kevin looked a bit relieved. "Sorry again."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dude. Chill. It's _fine._ "

Kevin came back on Monday, and every Monday after that, and Sam told himself it was a bad fucking idea to talk to him but he did it anyway, and every Monday and Friday he went to the roof to look at the stars.

The next time he saw Kevin drunk was, again, a Friday. It wasn't long before the end of the semester, and Sam had just finished researching a hunt for someone in North Carolina. Near ten o'clock, he got a call from an unknown number. Thinking it might be a hunter in need - he had become a less-knowledgeable version of Bobby, somewhere along the line - he answered. "Hello?"

"Hey," someone clearly very drunk said. "Sam. S'Kevin."

"You okay?" he asked, automatically checking that his knives were where they always were. "You need help?"

"M'fine," Kevin insisted. "Jus' wanna celebrate. You wanna celebrate?" Sam was saved from having to answer by Kevin rattling off an address and then hanging up.

He shouldn't go. He really shouldn't go. If he went, Kevin would kiss him again, and he'd kiss him back, and it would be bad.

But Kevin was drunk off his ass, and he'd called Sam, which meant he was probably alone. Alone and drunk in a city was just _asking_ for trouble.

He took the Impala. If he needed to get Kevin home, there was no way in hell walking was going to cut it, not with rain coming in and his leg hurting like a bitch.

When Kevin saw him, he grinned. "Sam!" he said excitedly, making a beeline for him.

Then he grabbed hold and started climbing on him like a monkey. Sam's arms went around him automatically to keep him from falling, cane clattering to the ground. "Kevin-" he began, then stopped. It was no use talking to him when he was drunk. "Let's get some food in you," he said instead, unwinding Kevin's limbs and ignoring the amused glances of the bar's patrons. He stooped to grab his cane and led Kevin back to the car.

"S'a nice car," Kevin said, staring. "Didn' know you _owned_ a car."

"It was my brother's," Sam said, limping to the driver's side and unlocking the door. "C'mon, get in."

Sam drove them to a diner, ordered bacon, coffee, eggs, and water, and ordered Kevin to drink more water than coffee. They ate in silence, and then Kevin asked him to show him something on campus he hadn't seen.

Sam thought in the car on the drive back, considering and discarding the hidden cemetery, crawl spaces, and attics. There was really only one place left.

He and Kevin took the elevator to the top floor of the library - Kevin was steady on his feet now, Sam was pleased to note - and though Kevin seemed surprised at the lack of alarm on the roof door, he didn't say anything.

They lay back on the blanket. "You bring girls up here?" Kevin asked.

Sam just smiled. No reason for Kevin to know he hadn't had a date since his last girlfriend turned out to be a werewolf. "I come up here to watch the stars," he said, dodging the real question. "It's peaceful. See, there's Orion, the hunter-" He cut himself off when Kevin put a hand on his chest. "Kevin," he said, gently pushing him away.

"I'm not drunk anymore," Kevin interrupted, "and I'm tired of being a virgin, and nobody's touched me in months, and if you don't touch me right now, I'm going to - to explode!"

And then he kissed Sam, and oh, it was good. Sam wrapped his arms around him and opened his mouth, mixing their breaths. His hands shifted to hold Kevin's face as he licked into him, enjoying the sensation, all the reasons they _shouldn't_ fleeing in the face of the reasons they _should._ Shirts were unbuttoned, hoodies unzipped, hands moving around each other's bodies in need. Sam pulled Kevin even closer and he came willingly, throwing a leg over both of Sam's and rubbing heedlessly.

Sam slid his hands lower, beneath Kevin's jeans, rubbing his ass. Kevin whimpered against him and he gripped more firmly, rubbing a finger against Kevin's hole through his briefs as Kevin rutted against him and came in his pants.

Like a teenager.

Which was exactly what Kevin was.

So when Kevin reached for Sam's pants, Sam grabbed his hands. "Shh," he whispered, trying to will his erection away, and Kevin dropped against him. Sam wrapped the blanket around them both despite knowing it was going to make the morning awkward and saying goodbye harder than it already was. Kevin was nineteen, not a child but sure as hell not an adult, and Sam was ten years older with a lot more mileage.

But for now, Kevin was in his arms, and the last thing Sam wanted to do was hurt him. So he held him close and prayed.

_Forgive me, Father, for I have failed._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry I lied at the beginning.


End file.
